TFIF Thank Ffffffriday It's Friday ep573:54

Beck Hansen - His 13th album Colors sees the eclectic, eccentric genius manchild have a crack at the pop market with middling results.Source:Supplied

Before the new Taylor Swift killed off the old Taylor Swift she did something rather generous. Tay Tay brought her musical heroes Beck and St Vincent on stage in Los Angeles to sing Beck’s carbonated pop hit Dreams. It killed.

“Playing with her was a little taste of Beatlemania or something. It was extraordinary. I don’t think I’ve ever felt energy come from an audience like that,” says Beck, the dreamy-eyed 47-year-old manchild.

It seems by osmosis, the experience led Beck back to pop. Like, really pop. He’s had his two biggest radio hits of the last 20 years in Dreams and Wow, both lifted from his 13th studio album, Colors, a buoyant follow-up to the moody melancholia of Grammy Award-winning Morning Phase (2014).

Beck tapped old mate and former bandmember Greg Kurstin to work with him on Colors.

“It’s that refrain you hear ‘Comedy is much harder than drama’ and it really is. Maybe five times harder. I have to say Colors was a huge challenge.

“It was painstaking,” he says. “That levity and uplifting, easy feeling in a song is a bit more difficult.” The strain shows on a track like Wow (“my kids loved that one, I thought the record company would hate it”), which feels like 2017 Beck parodying 1997 Beck. The record soars and scores then bores: Dear Life sounds like Spoon bending with Wings in a Honky Tonk bar, the title-track is a giddy rock ’n’ stroll dancey number, No Distraction is a mish-mash of over-produced hype-rock and Up All Night is instant grat, a song that makes you want to see the right side of 7am with the Midnite Vulture.

“That just happened one afternoon,” Beck says. “It felt like The ’Stones go to Brazil, then it evolved into something a little different. The chorus came much later. “Like a lot of the songs on the record, Greg Kurstin and I were just jamming. We were playing instruments and he was coming up with beats and I was playing percussion and we were making grooves.

“Between my studio and Greg’s studio, it’s the dream set-up you had in your mind when you were 18, everything you could want: a 1954 Goldtop Les Paul, a Fairchild compressor, all the stuff you hear on those old records.”

A long way away from bashing out acoustic songs with a beaten-up guitar at the back of a bus as Beck did as a teen. “Yeah, or recording things using stuff from Radio Shack electronics store,” as he did with his breakthrough album Mellow Gold.

And the last time Beck stayed up all night? “Too many times. A week ago in New Orleans, it was very much all night ... and I paid dearly for it for the next few days. It was down in the French Quarter, there was a traditional brass band, dancing and costumes. It was a pre-tour party for U2, a rare night off.”

Which became very much a night on. Bono’s morning-after capabilities are the stuff of legend while others are a sorry heap stuck in a morning phase. “I haven’t been around Bono that much but I can see he still has it. That’s what a lot of those bands have in common. Dave Grohl, Chris Martin, they just have a lot of extra fire.”

US singer-songwriter Beck is the Benjamin Button of music, seeming to age in reverseSource:Supplied

To Beck the truck up for a second, yes, he’s supporting U2 on a North American tour.

Recently, everyone wants a piece of the perennially cool elfin maestro. Flume, M83 and The Chemical Brothers asked Beck to do guest spots on album tracks — all three tracks are stunningly good.

“Out of the blue The Chemical Brothers reached out to me,” he says brightly, like the older kids at high school had validated him, even though “we started around the same time”. “We were orbiting in similar circles in the ’90s, they were in the electronic world. I was very touched they asked me to do that. I worked really hard on trying to come up with something they responded to.

“Wide Open is a new place emotionally and vocally. It’s maybe a musical thread I’ve worked on over the years and then I got the energy to put it out there. I sent them the vocals and they were much fuller sounding. They really stripped it back and made it much more vulnerable, that’s what you’re hearing.”

The Flume collaboration, Tiny Cities, almost didn’t eventuate.

“Tiny Cities was an interesting song, he came over with a bunch of ideas and I improvised a couple of vocals straight into his laptop using a mic and it’s not usually how I work. He picked out a few things he liked and told me to work on them. What was interesting is he gave the track to somebody else. I was really sad because I’d grown attached to the song.

“Then he became fond of the vocals and sent over all new music which he’d wrote underneath my vocals, so it has a strange history. I’m glad it found a place on the record. I thought I’d missed out a moment on a great track.”

Beck had an unpredictable moment with another Aussie 20 years ago in WA.

“I remember going on a roadtrip south of Perth with The Beastie Boys and my friend, Pav, and other musicians and everyone went home and I ended up with this van, driving on the wrong side of the road for me. I pulled off on a stretch of highway and I saw a little path and decided to go walking a little bit.

“I got about two minutes up the road before a very large kangaroo jumped in front of me with fairly large claws, oh man, and very sharp teeth. Not the cute cuddly ones I saw on TV in my youth (chuckles) and then I looked down and my feet were covered by red ants and being bitten.

“I thought the kangaroo was gonna come at me and I did that thing where I didn’t move and it stared at me intently ... for one of the longest minutes of my life.

“I knew I was in danger of physical harm. It looked at me .and decided I wasn’t worth the effort so it hopped off. It was quite a shock,” he says.

“I realised I wasn’t cut out for the Outback.”

REVIEW

COLORS

BECK

(Capitol)

3 stars

Colors - Beck (Capitol)Source:Supplied

Beck’s whole career has been about challenging himself. The latest? An unabashed pop record. Up All Night is the jaunty jam you’ve been wanting since Dreams took your breath away, the title-track is a flute of fancy, full of weird, Gimme-like, pitch-shifted vocals. One thing on this album, Beck sings too much. No Distraction feels constructed not channelled, the bridge is burnt and Wow is for Beck’s kids (bless), it’s a trap clanger — just like Johnny Depp making endless Pirates flicks for the franchise (and his esky lids). There’s five pearlers in here, focus on them, Beckolytes.